(Ascendant, Cancer; MC, Pisces; Sun and Mercury in Sagittarius with Sun conjunct
Mars in Capricorn; Moon in Scorpio with Jupiter and Venus also in Scorpio,
conjunct; Saturn conjunct Pluto in Leo; Uranus in Gemini; Neptune in
Libra)

Spielberg was a director at Columbia Pictures at 20 and has
gone on to film some of the most commercially successful films of all
time. He made the outstanding film 'Schindler's List', released in
December 1993, and won an Academy Award.

When I grow up,
I still want to be a director.

I dream for a living.
(North Node in Gemini in 12th house trine Neptune. Pisces on MC.)

You know, I don't
really do that much looking inside me when I'm working on a project.
Whatever I am becomes what that film is. But I change; you change.

All
of us every single year, we're a different person. I don't think we're
the same person all our lives.

I've
discovered I've got this preoccupation with ordinary people pursued
by large forces.
(Moon & stellium in Scorpio. Cancer Ascendant.)

Every time I go
to a movie, it's magic, no matter what the movie's about.
(Uranus conjunct North Node in 12th house)

I am an American
Jew and aware of the sensitivities involved in the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict.

(On his knighthood-)
I feel like I've been engaged to the British Empire since 1980 and tonight
you have given me the ring.

I interviewed survivors,
I went to Poland, saw the cities and spent time with the people and
spoke to the Jews who had come back to Poland after the war and talked
about why they had come back.
(Saturn conjunct Pluto in Leo trine South Node & Mercury in Sagittarius)

I want to be the
Cecil B. DeMille of science fiction.

I wanted to do another
movie that could make us laugh and cry and feel good about the world.
I wanted to do something else that could make us smile. This is a time
when we need to smile more and Hollywood movies are supposed to do that
for people in difficult times.

I'd rather direct
than produce. Any day. And twice on Sunday.

I'm always in favor
of Israel responding strongly when it's threatened. At the same time,
a response to a response doesn't really solve anything. It just creates
a perpetual-motion machine.

I'm not really interested
in making money.
(Saturn & Pluto in 2nd house square Moon in Scorpio)

If Bush, as I believe,
has reliable information on the fact that Saddam Hussein is making weapons
of mass destruction, I cannot not support the policies of his government.

The public has an
appetite for anything about imagination - anything that is as far away
from reality as is creatively possible.

When war comes,
two things happen - profits go way, way up and all perishables go way,
way down. There becomes a market for them.

“I never felt
comfortable with myself, because I was never part of the majority. I
always felt awkward and shy and on the outside of the momentum of my
friends' lives.” quote
(Uranus in 12th house)

“I've always
been very hopeful which I guess isn't strange coming from me. I don't
want to call myself an optimist. I want to say that I've always been
full of hope. I've never lost that. I have a lot of hope for this country
and for the entire world. . .”
(Moon conjunct Jupiter & Chiron in 5th house)

“A lot of
the films I've made probably could have worked just as well 50 years
ago, and that's just because I have a lot of old-fashion values.”
(Saturn in 2nd house)

“All I have
to do is pose for a picture and I'm getting married to the person standing
next to me.”

“There is
a fine line between censorship and good taste and moral responsibility.”

“People have
forgotten how to tell a story. Stories don't have a middle or an end
any more. They usually have a beginning that never stops beginning.”

“I like the
smell of film. I just like knowing there's film going through the camera.”

“We were
just doing a job and loving it. It had great success, and we were thrilled.
Then it got bigger and bigger, and then, out of nowhere, one day you're
reading that people are really annoyed. ... This [backlash] happens
to everybody. Don't think you're so special.”

“I hate that
people think it's wrong to say you're inspired by Jaws or by Raiders
Of The Lost Ark. You're allowed to be.” quote

“There are
three movies that I am exceptionally proud of in my life, and I rarely
commit to a list of films that I like, that I've made, ... but these
are the three films that I was passionately connected to. The first
was 'ET,' the second 'Schindler's List,' and third is 'Saving Private
Ryan.'” quote

“I felt,
for the first time in my career, that I was directing a stage production
more than a motion picture. Part of directing is psychotherapy. You're
sitting there with a lot of very talented patients, and you're hoping
your movie doesn't blow up in your face in anarchy.”

“These movies
are asking sensitive questions about racial intolerance and Middle East
politics. It's been an amazing year, very much like 1968, '69 and '70,
when you suddenly see all of these political movies coming out at the
same time, out of the watershed of politics. Some of it is due to our
own insecurity about the voices representing us in government right
now. We feel like our government has set us adrift, and we're trying
to make our voices heard. We're telling them to be worried about these
things.”
(Sun & Mercury in Sagittarius in 6th house)

“I don't
think this collection of films represent everything. We're not delivering
a shared point of view. These movies are all so different from each
other. We all look at a movie through a prism of everything our parents
and teachers taught us and what our children are telling us. You can't
make a movie expecting everyone will have the same reaction. Ten people
seeing 'Munich' will come out with 10 different points of view. It was
always that way, sitting around the Passover table talking about the
Middle East.”

“All through
my career I've done what I can to discover new talent and give them
a start.”

“Through
the visual arts, the performing arts, the art of music, the art of dance,
the art of celebration of life, all of us are dedicated to making this
Olympic opening and closing ceremonies the most emotional everyone has
ever seen.”

“I'd love
to build a company that will continue to make movies well beyond me
someday. And I'd like to help start something great, even investing
in it myself.”(Cancer rising)

“I don't
think any movie or any book or any work of art can solve the stalemate
in the Middle East today. But it's certainly worth a try.”

“We don't
demonize our targets. They're individuals. They have families. Although
what happened in Munich, I condemn.”

“There is
something about killing people at close range that is excruciating.
It's bound to try a man's soul.”

Steven Allan Spielberg,
(born December 18, 1946) is a two-time Academy Award winning American
film director and producer. Spielberg is the most financially successful
motion picture director of all time. He has directed and/or produced
a number of major box office hits. As of 2006, he has been listed in
Premiere magazine as the most "powerful" and "influential"
figure in the motion picture industry, and at the end of the 20th century
LIFE named him the most influential person of his generation.[1]

During the 1970s,
1980s and 1990s, three of his films became the highest grossing films
for their time: Jaws, E.T. and Jurassic Park. Spielberg is also one
of the co-founders of DreamWorks Pictures. Over his years as director
and producer, Spielberg has explored a large variety of subjects in
his films. His early adventure films are often seen as the archetype
of modern Hollywood blockbuster film-making. In recent years he has
tackled emotionally powerful issues, such as the Holocaust, slavery,
war, and terrorism.

Steven Allan Spielberg
was born in Cincinnati, Ohio to Arnold and Leah Spielberg (Leah later
remarried, and took on the name Leah Adler). He has three younger sisters.
His last name comes from the name of the Austrian city where his Hungarian
Jewish ancestors lived in 17th century: Spielberg. Spielberg spent much
of his childhood in several places as his family often moved because
of his father's job, as a computer engineer. Spielberg lived in Camden,
New Jersey, Haddon Township, New Jersey, Phoenix, Arizona and Saratoga,
California. The first film Spielberg ever saw was Cecil B. DeMille's
The Greatest Show on Earth.[2]

Spielberg grew up
making movies from an early age. In a interview with the American Film
Institute Spielberg recalls his earliest movie making memory - his enjoyment
of crashing his toy trains into each other. To avoid making his father
angry about repairing the trains he chose to film the crash at the points
where the trains met. Throughout his early teens, he made other amateur
8 mm "adventure" movies with his friends. He charged admission
to his home movies (which involved the wrecks he staged with his Lionel
train set) while his sister sold the popcorn. At the age of 13, Spielberg
won a prize for a 40.65-minute war movie he titled Escape to Nowhere.[2]

Whilst attending
Arcadia High School in Phoenix, Arizona in 1963, at the young age of
16, Spielberg wrote and directed his first large scale independent movie.
His 140-minute production was a science fiction adventure called Firelight
(which would later inspire Close Encounters). The movie, with a budget
of USD$400, was shown in his local movie theater and generated a profit
of $100. Firelight was Spielberg's first real commercial success and
the local Phoenix press wrote that he could expect great things to come.[3]

After his parents
divorced he moved to California with his father. His three sisters and
mother remained in Arizona. Subsequently he graduated from Saratoga
High School in Saratoga, California in 1965. On attending Saratoga High
School, he said that it was the "worst experience" of his
life and "hell on Earth".[4] Spielberg was given the nickname
"Spielbug" [2] During this time Spielberg became an Eagle
Scout and recipient of the Distinguished Eagle Scout Award from the
Boy Scouts of America (BSA), as he developed the requirements for the
Boy Scout Cinematography merit badge.[5] In later life, he resigned
from the national board of BSA after he had been admitted (because of
his disapproval regarding the BSA's anti-homosexuality stance).[6]

After moving to
California he applied to attend film school at UCLA and University of
Southern California's School of Cinema-Television three separate times
but was unsuccessful (though USC awarded Spielberg an honorary degree
in 1994 and in 1996 he became a trustee of the University). Reasons
for his failure to gain entry were based on his "C" grade
average. He then attended California State University, Long Beach at
the behest of his parents who wanted him to gain a degree and personally
to avoid the possibility of the draft for Vietnam.[2] Spielberg once
joked that his movie career began the day that he decided to jump off
a tour bus at Universal Studios in Hollywood and wandered around the
disused film lots. There have been many alternate versions of that story.
However his actual career began, when he returned to Universal studios
as an unpaid, three-day-a-week intern and guest of the editing department.[7]

While attending
college at Long Beach State in the 1960s, Spielberg also became member
of Theta Chi Fraternity. In 2002, thirty-five years after starting college,
Spielberg finished his degree via independent projects at CSULB, and
was awarded a B.A. in Film Production and Electronic Arts with an option
in Film/Video Production.[8] Fraternity brothers often tell stories
of Spielberg running around with a movie camera making short films.

Once as an intern
and guest of Universal Studios, Spielberg made his first short film
for theatrical release, creating Amblin', in 1968, at the age of twenty-one.
This movie, only 24 minutes long, led to his becoming the youngest director
ever to be signed to a long-term deal with a major Hollywood studio
(Universal) after Sid Sheinberg, then the vice-president of production
for Universals' TV arm saw the film. In later life Spielberg's own production
company, Amblin Entertainment, was named after his short film. He then
dropped out of Long Beach State in 1969 to take the television director
contract at Universal Studios and began his career as a professional
director.

Early career (1968-1975)
His first professional TV job came when he was hired to do one of the
segments for the pilot episode of Night Gallery. The segment, Eyes,
starred Joan Crawford, and she and Spielberg were reportedly close friends
until her death. The episode is unusual in his body of work, in that
the camerawork is more highly stylized than his later, more "mature"
films. After this, and an episode of Marcus Welby M.D., Spielberg got
his first feature-length assignment: an episode of Name of the Game
called "L.A. 2017". This episode played to his interests in
futuristic science fiction, and Universal first began to take note of
his talents. He did another segment on Night Gallery (some people claim
that he also directed a short five-minute segment called "A Matter
of Semantics" when the credited director had to back out for unknown
reasons, but this has never been confirmed), and did some work for shows
such as Owen Marshall, Counselor at Law and The Psychiatrist before
landing the first series episode of Columbo (previous "episodes"
were actually TV-Movies).

Spielberg's
films often deal with several recurring themes. Most of his films deal
with ordinary characters searching for or coming in contact with extraordinary
beings or finding themselves in extraordinary circumstances, which actually
describes literally thousands of films. This is especially evident in
Duel, Jaws, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial,
Empire of the Sun, Hook, Jurassic Park, Saving Private Ryan, Catch Me
if You Can, War of the Worlds and Munich.
In an AFI interview in August 2000 Spielberg commented on his interest
in the possibility of extra terrestrial life and how it has influenced
some of his films. To that tradition of fascination with space, Spielberg
has placed on several occasions, shooting stars in the background of
his films such as in Jaws. Spielberg described himself as feeling like
an alien during childhood,[2] and his interest came from his father,
a science fiction fan, and his opinion that aliens would not travel
light years for conquest, but instead curiosity and sharing of knowledge.[27]

A strong consistent
theme in his family-friendly work is a childlike, even naïve, sense
of wonder and faith, as attested by works such as Close Encounters of
the Third Kind, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, Hook and A.I.. According
to Warren Buckland [28] these themes are portrayed through the use of
low height camera tracking shots, which have become one of Spielberg's
directing trademarks. In the cases when his films include children,
(E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, Empire of the Sun, Jurassic Park, etc.)
this type of shot is more apparent, but it is also used in films like
Munich, Saving Private Ryan, The Terminal, Minority Report and Amistad.
If one views each of his films, one will see this shot utilised by the
director, notably the water scenes in Jaws are filmed from the low angle
perspective of someone swimming. Another child orientated theme in Spielberg's
films is that of loss of innocence and coming-of-age. In Empire of the
Sun, Jim, a well-groomed and spoilt English youth, loses his innocence
as he suffers through World War II Japan. Similarly in Catch Me if You
Can Frank naively and foolishly believes that he can reclaim his shattered
family if he accumulates enough money to support them.

The most persistent
theme throughout his film is tension between parent-child relationships.
Parents (often fathers) are reluctant, absent or ignorant. Peter Banning
in Hook starts off in the beginning of the film as a reluctant married-to-his-work
parent who through the course of his film regains the respect of his
children. The notable absence of Elliott's father in E.T., is the most
famous example of this theme. In Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade,
it is revealed that Indy has always had a very strained relationship
with his father, who is also an archaelogist, as his father always seemed
more interested in his work, specifically in his studies of the Holy
Grail, than in his own son, although his father does not seem to realize
or understand the negative effect that his aloof nature had on Indy
(he even believes he was a good father in the sense that he taught his
son "self reliance", which is not how Indy saw it). Even Oskar
Schindler, from Schindler's List, is reluctant to have a child with
his wife. Munich depicts Avner as man away from his wife and newborn
daughter. There are of course exceptions; Brody in Jaws is a committed
family man, while John Anderton in Minority Report is a shattered man
after the disappearance of his son. This theme is arguably the most
autobiographical aspect of Spielberg's films, since Spielberg himself
was affected by his parents' divorce as a child and by the absence of
his father. Furthermore to this theme, protagonists in his films often
come from families with divorced parents, most notably E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial
(protagonist Elliot's mother is divorced) and Catch Me if You Can (Frank
Abagnale's mother and father split early on in the movie). Little known
also is Tim in Jurassic Park (early in the movie the child mentions
his parents' divorce). The family often shown divided is often resolved
in the ending as well.

One aspect of Spielberg's
films and possibly is that most of his films are generally optimistic
in nature. Critics often accuse his films for being overtly sentimental,
though Spielberg feels it's fine as long as it is disguised, and the
influence comes from directors Frank Capra and John Ford.[14] There
are exceptions, his debut feature The Sugarland Express has a downbeat
ending where Ila Fae loses custody of her daughter and most recently
A.I. where David never receives acceptance from his real mother. Recently
however his 21st century output from A.I. to Munich are slightly different
in tone with respect to his earlier films. In A.I., David is shunned
and rejected by his family and indeed most of the world at large and
ultimately never earns the love of his real mother. The crime-caper,
Catch Me if You Can, with a certain irony when Frank, who continuously
rebels against authority figures throughout the film, becomes part of
the very system he fought against; while War of the Worlds was the first
time Spielberg attempted to show aliens who were evil rather than friendly
to humanity. Munich, his latest and most controversial film, is also
his most ambiguous, as in the end it's uncertain whether the cycle of
violence would ever truly end.

Personal life
From 1985 to 1989 Spielberg was married to actress Amy Irving. She received
a US $100 million settlement from Spielberg in their 1989 divorce when
a judge controversially vacated a prenuptial agreement which was written
on a napkin. Both Spielberg and Irving share custody. After his divorce
from Irving, Spielberg developed a relationship with actress Kate Capshaw,
whom he met when he cast her in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.
They married on October 12, 1991. Capshaw converted to Judaism so she
could wed the Jewish-American director. They currently move between
their four homes in Pacific Palisades, California; New York City; East
Hampton, NY and Naples, Florida. He has eight children.

Max Samuel Spielberg
(June 13, 1985) (with actress Amy Irving)
Sasha (June 1990), Sawyer (March 10, 1992), and Destry Allyn (born on
December 1, 1996) (with Kate Capshaw)
Theo (1988 - African-American; adopted by Capshaw before her marriage
to Spielberg; adopted by Spielberg.) and Mikaela George (born on Feb.
28, 1996 adopted with Capshaw.) (two adopted children)
Jessica Capshaw (1976) (daughter from Kate Capshaw's previous marriage)
On February 7, 2000, Spielberg's doctor discovered an irregularity on
his kidney during a routine physical. It was later found to be Renal
cell carcinoma, a form of kidney cancer. The kidney was later removed
at Cedars Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. At 53, Spielberg recovered
quickly and required no follow up treatment.

Spielberg generally
supports U.S. Democratic Party candidates. He was close friends of former
President Bill Clinton and worked with the President for the USA Millennium
celebrations. He directed an 18 minute film for the project, scored
by John Williams and entitled The American Journey. It was shown at
America's Millennium Gala on December 31, 1999 in the National Mall
at the Reflecting Pool at the base of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington
D.C.. [29] However, although Spielberg generally supports Democratic
leaders such as Clinton, Al Gore and John Kerry, he joined Jeffrey Katzenberg
and Haim Saban in endorsing the re-election of Hollywood friend Arnold
Schwarzenegger, the Republican Governor of California, on August 7,
2006.

On February 20,
2007, Spielberg, Katzenberg, and David Geffen invited Democrats to a
fundraiser for Barack Obama, who has formed an exploratory committee
for a 2008 presidential run.[30]

In the fickle world
of cinema, there are very few names you can splash across a billboard
to ensure a film's financial success. Harrison Ford, perhaps, or Julia
Roberts. George Lucas, if it's a Star Wars movie. Tom Cruise seemed
a cert till Eyes Wide Shut. These names will probably make you millions,
but there's only one sure-fire guarantee - Steven Spielberg. As a director,
he's the most successful of all time. His films have been so popular,
so consistently entertaining, that people rush to see anything tagged
as A Steven Spielberg Production, even movies he merely financed. No
one else has muscle like that. No one else ever has.

As a film-maker,
he started early. He was born Steven Allan Spielberg on the 18th of
December, 1946, in Cincinnati, Ohio. His father, Arnold, was an electrical
engineer involved in the development of computers, while mother Leah,
a concert pianist, looked after the four children - Steven was the oldest,
the others being Annie, Sue and Nancy. The family soon moved to Scottsdale,
Arizona - Steven would attend Arcadia High School in Phoenix - and it
was here that his love for movies (and his financial acumen) began to
blossom. Perhaps unnaturally quickly, if reports that Spielberg suffered
from Asperger's Syndrome are to be believed. This is a mild form of
autism that leads to obsessional interests - often with very positive
results.

Leah being as indulgent
as Arnold was emotionally remote (many fathers in Spielberg movies are
either missing or distant), Steven's interest in film-making was encouraged.
By 12, he'd made his first amateur film, an 8-minute Western called
The Last Gun, which Steven financed with a tree-planting business. He'd
charge admission to his home movies, getting Annie to sell popcorn,
and his projects rapidly became more ambitious in scale and scope. By
14, he'd made a 40-minute war film, Escape To Nowhere, on 8mm, and another
short, Battle Squad, which mixed WW2 footage with sequences he'd shot
at Phoenix airport. Even that young, he'd learned how to make stationary
aircraft seem as if they were travelling at supersonic speed. Within
two years he was working on Firelight, a 140-minute sci-fi epic, based
on a story his sister Nancy had written about a UFO attack. He would,
as all the world knows, return often to the subjects of war and alien
life-forms.

There would be an
emotional side to his story-telling, too, and a vaguely autobiographical
one. Many of Spielberg's films feature kids in distress and that aforementioned
distant father. This mirrors Steven's own relationship with Arnold -
not a good one. On one occasion, Arnold brought a tiny transistor home,
showed it to Steven and told him is was the future. Steven took it,
put it in his mouth and, washing it down with milk, swallowed it. So
much for Arnold's future (though, of course, he was very right). Eventually,
Arnold and Leah's marriage began to fall apart. Steven would shove towels
under his door to keep out the noise of the arguments. Divorce followed,
and Steven was estranged from Arnold for 15 years.

As an Eagle Scout
(he'd later serve on the Advisory Board of the Boy Scouts of America,
only to quit over a perceived discrimination against homosexuals) with
such enthusiasm and practical experience, you'd have thought he'd walk
into film school. Yet Spielberg was twice turned down for the prestigious
film course at the University of Southern California, instead studying
English at California State University at Long Beach, then moving into
film.

It was a minor hitch
since, by the age of 22, Spielberg was signed up by Universal. Legend
has it that the canny Steven inveigled his way into the industry by
sneaking away from a tour of Universal studios, finding an abandoned
janitor's backroom, doing it up as an office and turning up for work
every day until someone mistakenly gave him some work to do. In reality,
it was a 26-minute movie called Amblin' that scored him his big chance.
Concerning a boy and girl who meet while hitch-hiking and become friends
and lovers on their way to a paradisiacal beach, the film was a prize-winner
at the Atlanta Film Festival and won Steven his 7-year contract with
Universal. In fond memory of this, he would name his first production
company Amblin Entertainment.

There is a further
story here. Amblin' was financed to the tune of $15,000 by one Denis
C. Hoffman. In return for his money and support, Hoffman agreed that,
instead of taking a cut of the boy's future earnings (which Hoffman
apparently thought to be mean-spirited), Spielberg would direct a film
of Hoffman's choosing within 10 years of the contract's signing - on
28th of September, 1968. However, in 1975, when Spielberg broke big
with Jaws, the contract was said to be unenforceable. Being born on
December 18th, 1947, it was claimed, Spielberg was still a minor when
he signed. Come 1994, when it was revealed that Spielberg was actually
born in 1946, Hoffman would sue for fraud and breach of contract.

Contracted to make
TV shows, Spielberg directed episodes of Marcus Welby MD, The Name Of
The Game, The Psychiatrist and Owen Marshall: Counsellor At Law. He
also made a full-length Columbo movie, and helmed one of the more famous
episodes of Rod Serling's Night Gallery. Here Joan Crawford played a
rich blind woman who purchases the eyes of Tom Bosley, who's badly in
debt, in order to gain eight hours of sight. She thinks the operation
is a failure but, unbeknownst to her, New York is suffering a power-cut.
Spooky stuff, despite the nagging suspicion that New York might have
the odd emergency generator.

This episode was
superb, with Spielberg drawing an excellent performance from the ageing
Crawford. But it was his first TV movie proper that made him. Starring
Dennis Weaver as a travelling salesman taunted, menaced and nearly killed
by the faceless driver of a monster truck, Duel was a classic, so good
it actually opened in European cinemas. Next came spook-flick Something
Evil, with Sandy Dennis, and blackmail thriller Savage with Martin Landau,
but Spielberg now had his own cinema project in mind. This was Sugarland
Express, where Goldie Hawn (desperate to escape her dippy comic image)
played a mother who, fearing her child is to be put up for adoption,
persuades her hubbie to come on the run. The movie, while often hilarious
(the couple are eventually tailed by hundreds of police cars), was also
taut and upsetting, brilliantly handled. For his role as co-writer,
Spielberg won for Best Screenplay at Cannes.

Now came the big
one. Peter Benchley had scored a massive hit with his book Jaws, about
a Great White Shark feasting on New England holidaymakers, and Spielberg
was handed the job of taking the bestseller to the screen. It proved
a nightmare big-budget debut. Not only were there all the extras to
choreograph, but seabound shoots are notoriously difficult. And of course
there was the shark. State of the art technology was employed to create
a convincing 25-foot man-eater (affectionately known as Bruce), yet
malfunctions were continual. The production was bad-tempered, the shoot
over-ran by 100 days, Spielberg was almost replaced, and editing continued
right up until the eve of release.

Everyone expected
disaster. Yet, thanks to Spielberg's mastery of suspense and clever
action techniques, the $8.5 million Jaws took off, making $260 million
and, in the process, beginning the trend for summer blockbusters. Beyond
this, it made the world afraid to go back in the water. Some of us haven't
gone back in since. We don't much like to inspect the underside of boats
either. Spielberg was now Hollywood's It Boy, and he immediately took
the opportunity to make a "real" sci-fi movie. Close Encounters
Of The Third Kind, like Jaws starring Richard Dreyfuss (Spielberg calls
him his alter ego), was a monster. Combining sweeping action with intensely
emotional close-ups, it saw Spielberg attempting to match his hero,
David Lean, director of Lawrence Of Arabia and Bridge On The River Kwai
(another of his influences, Francois Truffaut actually starred in Close
Encounters). The SFX were mind-boggling, even out-shining those of the
movie's sci-fi rival in 1977, Star Wars.

Spielberg could
now do as he pleased, and he nearly blew it. 1941 was another epic,
this time concerning events surrounding Pearl Harbour. However, starring
John Belushi, it was also intended to be a comedy and, though stylish,
it just wasn't funny. It was Spielberg's first and last real failure,
having the effect of launching him on an unbelievable run of success.
Next came the swashbuckling and enormously exciting Raiders Of The Lost
Ark, produced by fellow-wunderkind George Lucas, which introduced renegade
academic Indiana Jones and allowed Spielberg his first pop at the Nazis
(his father had had relatives in the death camps). Next came ET: The
Extra-Terrestrial, starring Spielberg's god-daughter Drew Barrymore
and involving a cute baby alien abandoned on Earth. The first production
by Spielberg's Amblin Entertainment, it was the biggest grosser in history,
sending him on his way to a personal fortune that would eventually top
$2 billion. More success followed with the movie version of The Twilight
Zone and the Raiders sequel Indiana Jones And The Temple Of Doom, if
anything better than the original. In the meantime, there were big production
successes with Poltergeist, Gremlins and The Goonies, the first and
third based on stories written by Spielberg. He could do no wrong.

Well, not in the
public's eyes. Critics, on the other hand, found his work spurious and
emotionally flimsy, claiming his films were all flash and no content.
Oscar-nominated as Best Director for Close Encounters, Raiders and ET,
he was overlooked each time. Spielberg reacted by getting serious, taking
on Alice Walker's Pulitzer Prize-winning The Color Purple, another hit
novel, this time concerning the journey of black women to self-discovery
and inner liberation. Again the critics went at him, complaining that
the film was too sugary (as if the book wasn't). The film was put up
for eleven Oscars but Spielberg the director was pointedly ignored.

Still, he persisted.
Empire Of The Sun was a superb film, outlining the boyhood of author
JG Ballard in Japanese prison camps. There were brilliant performances
by John Malkovich, Miranda Richardson and a host of Brit favourites.
Once more the stunning action was combined with scenes of tremendously
human interaction, making sense of Spielberg's assertion that "Before
I go off and direct a movie, I always look at four films. They tend
to be The Seven Samurai, Lawrence Of Arabia, It's A Wonderful Life and
The Searchers". It was superb, but not a big hit, unlike the following
third Indiana Jones instalment (Spielberg had been working on Rain Man
for five months, but had to helm The Last Crusade because he'd shaken
on it). And, aside from the moderately successful Always (a remake of
his boyhood favourite A Guy Named Joe, and featuring the final performance
of Audrey Hepburn, who donated her entire $1 million fee direct to UNICEF),
and Hook, a retelling of Peter Pan that was a little too whimsical for
its own good, he now ONLY made big hits.

First came Jurassic
Park. Like Jaws with dinosaurs, this allowed Spielberg to once again
exhibit his awesome ability in the use of shock tactics. The computer-generated
monsters furthermore kept him on the cutting edge of popular cinema
and, as Jurassic Park was the biggest grosser ever (beating Spielberg's
own ET) and, combined with its sequel The Lost World, made $1.6 billion,
he was furthermore very rich indeed. But Spielberg really wanted respect
and set to work on a movie he'd been planning for a decade. Based on
Thomas Keneally's Booker Prize-wining book, Schindler's List told the
tale of a Nazi who risked his life and fortune to save Jews from the
extermination camps. Spielberg had never dealt with ethnicity before
but, with Empire Of The Sun, he did have experience of portraying large
scale wartime misery. With the film shot in stark black and white, Liam
Neeson excellent as the dissolute altruist and Ralph Fiennes even better
as the cruel, tortured Kommandant, Schindler's List was magnificent.
And, given Clint Eastwood's recent triumph with Unforgiven, the Academy
were in the mood to accept that fact, bestowing upon Spielberg the Oscars
for Best Picture and Best Director.

Of course, the movie
made a fortune but Spielberg, considering it to be "blood money",
gave his share to various Jewish projects via the Righteous Persons
Foundation. He also established the Survivors of the Shoah Visual History
Foundation which, in 57 countries and 32 languages, taped over 50,000
statements from victims and witnesses of the Holocaust.

It all just got
bigger and better. Having made Amistad, the tale of a slave revolt aboard
ship and the subsequent trial ("Give us us FREE!"), Spielberg
upped the ante by forming the multi-media giant Dreamworks with Jeffrey
Katzenberg and David Geffen, dealing in live action and animated features,
music, television programming and interactive software - the company
insuring Steven's life for $1.2 billion. He was building a big family
with actress Kate Capshaw (who'd starred in Temple Of Doom), siring
Sasha, Sawyer, Jessica and Destry and adopting Theo and Mikaela (both
black, if you ever doubted Spielberg's sincerity with The Color Purple
or Amistad). And he paid out a very big divorce settlement to his ex,
Amy Irving, who bore him son Max and, in 1989, took him for between
100 and 125 million dollars.

Having proved himself
as a "serious" director, Spielberg took his newfound reputation
and returned to his roots (remember Escape To Nowhere and Battle Squad?)
with Saving Private Ryan, the first large-scale WW2 movie since Richard
Attenborough's A Bridge Too Far. Almost foolishly ambitious, it attempted
to accurately portray the full horror of the Normandy landings and,
with the bullets hissing through the water, the sound and vision rising
and falling, and the bodyparts flying, it was indeed as terrifying as
it could be. Without Bruce suddenly gliding into sight, that is. The
movie was extraordinary, spawning Band Of Brothers (a collaboration
between Spielberg and Ryan star Tom Hanks and, at $120 million, the
most expensive TV drama ever), and winning Spielberg another Oscar.
So bruised was Spielberg by his previous Oscar experiences, he humbly
asked in his acceptance speech "Am I allowed to say I really wanted
this?"

Spielberg was now
THE major player in Hollywood. Aside from his own monstrously successful
projects, he'd been involved in the production of smashes like Deep
Impact, Men In Black, Twister and the Back To The Future trilogy. On
TV, there was ER and Sea Quest DSV. And there was the animation, a childhood
love. Spielberg had his own Amblination studio, and helped make An American
Tail, Land Before Time and Fievel Goes West, as well as the TV hits
Tiny Toon Adventures, Animaniacs and Pinky And The Brain.

Now came AI: Artificial
Intelligence, Spielberg being one of the very few directors with the
class and the cajones to take over the project after the death of Stanley
Kubrick. Starring Haley Joel Osment as a 'borg seeking the meaning of
humanity, it saw Spielberg once again viewing the world through a child's
eyes, as he had done with ET, Empire Of The Sun and, in a roundabout
way, with Duel and Raiders, the heroes of which were most child-like
in being confronted and confounded by a cruel (read Adult) world. Arnold's
distance had certainly left its mark. There would have been more, as
Spielberg had been down to direct Big, with Harrison Ford in the Tom
Hanks role, but he pulled out so as not to steal the thunder of sister
Annie who co-wrote the script (and received an Oscar nomination for
her pains).

In 2000, Spielberg
was made a Knight of the British Empire for his services to the British
film industry (though, not being a Commonwealth citizen, he cannot call
himself Sir Steven), having earlier received a Bundesverdienstkreuz
mit Stern, Germany's highest civil distinction. His face was now familiar
to all, though he had made several high profile onscreen appearances.
He'd turned up in Michael Jackson's video for Liberian Girl, and Cyndi
Lauper's Goonies R Good Enough. He was Man In Electric Wheelchair in
Gremlins, a tourist at the airport in Temple Of Doom, the Cook County
clerk in The Blues Brothers, and a voice on the radio in Jaws.

It wasn't all good.
In 1998, one Jonathan Norman was jailed for life for stalking Spielberg,
and even threatening to rape him. But Spielberg deals in decency where
he can. His deep love of film causes him to spend large sums on historical
artifacts and donate them to the Academy for posterity - items including
Clark Gable's Oscar for It Happened One Night ($607,500), Betty Davis's
for Jezebel ($578,000) and an original Rosebud sledge from Citizen Kane.
He ensured a US release for Dreams, by Kurosawa, another big influence.
And he's strict but fair and kind with those around him. Hiring Tom
Sizemore for Ryan, he was aware of the actor's addiction to heroin and
cocaine and told him he'd have him tested every day of the shoot. If
a trace of drugs was found, even on the last day, he'd re-cast and re-shoot,
no matter what the expense. Sizemore stayed clean.

2001 saw Spielberg
deliver the film version of another publishing phenomenon, Harry Potter
And The Sorceror's Stone. At least, that's how the movie was presented
even though Spielberg did not direct it. "For me," he said
"that was shooting ducks in a barrel. It's just a slam-dunk. It's
like withdrawing a billion dollars and putting it into your personal
bank accounts". The movie was actually directed by Chris Columbus,
but this is seldom mentioned. Though he helmed such mega-hits as Home
Alone, Mrs Doubtfire and Stepmom, Columbus's achievements pale beside
those of his producer. Spielberg is now a kind of cinematic brand-name.

After the mega-success
of Harry Potter, one of the biggest hits in history, came the collaboration
everyone was waiting for - Spielberg and Cruise, the biggest name and
the biggest face. In Minority Report (like Blade Runner based on the
work of Philip K. Dick) Cruise played John Anderton, head of a pre-crime
unit who, thanks to the work of psychics, bust criminals before they
actually commit their crimes. Then he himself is accused and disappears
into a world of crazy intrigue, in the first real detective story Spielberg's
directed since Columbo. It was yet another US Number One.

After this came
another thriller, Catch Me If You Can, this time with old buddy Tom
Hanks playing an FBI agent tracking down young con artist Leonardo DiCaprio
as he flips between a crazy series of identities and professions. The
movie would bring an Oscar nomination for Christopher Walken (another
mark of the respect Spielberg's films were now receiving) and would
make a beefy $164 million at the US box office. Spielberg would stay
with Hanks for The Terminal, where Hanks would play a displaced Eastern
European, unable to return home or to step onto American soil and therefore
doomed to a bizarre existence at a US airport.

These last two movies
were almost entirely action-free, as if Spielberg were finally ready
to consistently deal in character-driven pieces. But there was no way
he could resist re-teaming with Tom Cruise to remake one of the great
sci-fi classics of his youth, War Of The Worlds. This saw destruction
reach unprecedented heights as Spielberg indulged in a feast of SFX,
capturing the public imagination yet again and this time raking in a
massive $264 million.

2005 would clearly
define the two sides of the middle-aged Spielberg. War Of The Worlds
proved he had not lost his childhood love of thrills and spills (or
his ongoing dislike for absent fathers). Munich, on the other hand,
saw the new(ish) politicized Spielberg, keen to explore the world's
present problems by considering traumatic events in the past. The movie
would begin at the Olympics of 1972, where 11 Israeli athletes were
murdered by terrorists, and would follow a crack squad assembled by
Mossad as they criss-crossed the globe, hunting down the perpetrators
and offing them in ever more ingenious ways. Naturally, the truth of
his version of events was questioned and, just as naturally, so was
the behaviour (both good and bad) of the state of Israel. Growing more
thoughtful and therefore more provocative with age, Spielberg was suddenly
controversial - about time, too, many would say - and Munich, nominated
for a Best Picture Oscar, would also see him nominated as director for
the first time since Saving Private Ryan.

More hits, more
money to add to the billions already made. Spielberg had reached a peak
undreamed of by most directors. George Lucas has had hits, too, but
- remember - almost exclusively with Star Wars (incidentally, Spielberg
would help direct some of the action sequences for Revenge Of The Sith).
All the different things Spielberg touches turn to gold. And now comes
a new challenge. Spielberg has always wanted the respect of his peers,
and always loved the history of cinema and its pioneers. He would love
to be counted amongst them. Schindler's List, Saving Private Ryan and
Munich have have seen him taken seriously in most quarter but, even
so, after the long-anticipated Indiana Jones 4, we can expect a deeper
Spielberg, a Spielberg who consistently has something to say. Of course,
he's sure to also deliver us a massive injection of entertainment. That's
Spielberg - always the selling point, the ONLY guaranteed good time.